James Edward Pinkney

My late father, as a young Admiralty technician, was posted to Belfast for a period to run the demagnetising of ships' hulls before they set to sea. He had the kit, three men, and a dinghy. He would go out to the vessel concerned, map out the vessel's magnetic field, and work out where and how to drape the copper cables to be charged. He would then return ashore and send his men out to get on with the manual part while he stayed ashore  with a cuppa and a pair of fieldglasses. When he observed that they were near completion, he'd go back out to the vessel and do the technical stuff, which involved passing a measured electrical charge around the hull. This was necessary even with a largely wooden-hulled vessel like HMD Jewel, as the ship had, as you might imagine, many metal parts to be degaussed. He had done this, signed off the work with the skipper, and went back ashore. Once there he heard, so he told me, an almighty bang echoing down Belfast Lough, looked out, and there the Jewel wasn't. He would probably have been the last person to see and speak with the captain and crew, including Lowestoft's James Pinkney.

He did wonder for a while whether the Germans had varied the magnetism of their mines, but the Admiralty hearing concluded that it was an acoustic mine that had been set off by the sound of the Jewel's engines starting up.

An anecdote which you now know as well as me, and it would be a pity for it to be lost.

Best wishes from Angus Graham, Liverpool